The Case of the "Guilty" Client

by Erle Stanley Gardner

Should a lawyer defend a person who he has reason to believe is guilty?

Let's first ask this question: How does the lawyer know his client is guilty?

Does the evidence against the client seem overwhelming?

I can cite you a case in Laguna Beach where a young man was identified absolutely and positively by no less than seven people as having committed a whole series of atrocious crimes. The very nature of these crimes was so revolting that it was difficult not to become prejudiced against the accused simply because of the nature of the charges made against him.

The only thing that stood between the defendant and life imprisonment was the faith of one attorney, an attorney working without compensation who believed that it was his solemn duty to fight for his client and keep on fighting, regardless of the number of eyewitnesses who swore they had seen his client commit these unspeakable crimes.

What happened?

Braving the indignation of the community, this attorney kept sifting through the evidence until finally he was able to prove that all of these witnesses were mistaken in their identification and that the crimes had, in fact, been committed by another person.

I can call to mind one case which I personally investigated after the defendant had been sentenced to death. Here again the crime was so revolting that the court-appointed attorney quite evidently didn't want to get his hands dirty with it. He made a conscientious effort to see that the defendant received a "fair trial," but his heart wasn't in his case to the extent of fighting every inch of the way, looking at every bit of evidence on the assumption that his client was innocent.

And so this lawyer, apparently believing in his heart that his client was guilty, failed to notice a peculiar circumstance in the evidence, a circumstance which, when properly interpreted, proved absolutely that the defendant couldn't have been the one who was guilty of the crime. Either the testimony introduced by the prosecution's own witnesses was completely erroneous or else the defendant had to be innocent.

This point went into the transcript unnoticed, the defendant was convicted and sentenced to death, the case was affirmed on appeal by the Supreme Court, and it wasn't until the eve of the man's execution that a careful study of the transcript revealed the point.

All right, but how about these cases when the client confesses?

Well, let's look at the murder of Joyce Raulston in Detroit. In that case, the person accused of the crime not only confessed to the police, but he then went out and re-enacted the murder for the benefit of the police, the district attorney, and the newspapers. He made not one but five separate and distinct confessions.

Yet two attorneys appointed by the court to defend this unfortunate man came to the conclusion that despite the man's confessions, made for some reason which they couldn't determine, certain bits of physical evidence did not conform to the details of the man's confessions.

These attorneys put up a vigorous, last-ditch fight, a fight which probably would have done no good as far as the jury was concerned because the district attorney was characterizing their points as technicalities, straws at which a drowning man was clutching, etc., etc. However, their fight did delay the man's conviction.

And this man was innocent. Just as the jury was deliberating his fate, the police, through a series of fortuitous circumstances, apprehended the man who really was guilty of the murder. They secured such a detailed confession from this person that there could be no question as to his guilt. This man had the purse of the murdered girl in his possession and the weapon with which the crime had been committed.

How about cases where the undisputed facts seem to show a man is guilty?

I have recently been investigating a case in one of the rugged California mountain areas where a man, walking along a trail in the mountains, came on a man lying at the point of death in the trail. A heavy hunting knife was protruding from the back of this man, who quite obviously was dying but was still alive.

The good Samaritan knelt by the man's side. He saw that the man's face was in the dirt, that the man was trying to tell him something. He pulled the knife out of the man's back so that he could roll him over, and put his ear down to listen to the man's last words.

Two deer hunters coming along the trail at that moment saw the good Samaritan, holding the knife in his hand, bending over the dying man. The man died just as the two deer hunters came up.

The good Samaritan was tried for murder, was found guilty and was executed.

Years later the real murderer, on his deathbed, made a confession and told where he had hidden certain things in the bushes near the scene of the crime. Investigators went there and found these things just where the murderer had said they would be, and so realized that an innocent man had been sentenced to death and had been executed.

I could multiply these cases times without number.

The law guarantees that a man has the right of trial by jury. Whenever he cannot be given an adequate defense because some lawyer thinks he is guilty, that man is not being given a trial by jury. He is having, instead, a trial by one man.

Too many people who see a lawyer defending a man accused of crime, a man who quite evidently seems to be guilty, feel there is an attempt on the part of the lawyer to cheat justice, to interpose his legal knowledge between some defendant and punishment for an atrocious crime.

The public needs to be educated as to what is actually taking place.

The public is seeing an attorney at law performing a duty which may well be unpleasant and distasteful, a duty which may well result in alienating the sentiment of the community, a duty which is imposed upon the attorney by his oath of office, yet nevertheless a duty which guarantees your rights and mine.

The law knows of only one way by which your rights and my rights can be safeguarded. The law knows that at any time some peculiar combination of circumstances may forge such a chain of circumstantial evidence around us that we will be prosecuted for crime, even though we are innocent. The law knows that at any time some murderer, trying to save his own skin, may make up a story against us out of whole cloth, a story which seems so devastatingly convincing that even our best friends shake their heads in doubt. The law knows that at any time some combination of criminals, trapped and desperate, may need a "fall guy" in order to keep their own crime from being detected.

There is one thing, and only one thing, which stands between the citizens and the possible wrongful conviction of crime, and that is a body of lawyers so courageous, so fearless, and so willing to fight for the safeguards which the law has given us that they will impair their own popularity if necessary to see that we are given the protection of the law.

These things are not technicalities; these are not attempts by some cunning attorney to circumvent the law, even though they may seem so in cases where it subsequently turns out the person actually is guilty. That which the public sees in such cases is an attorney performing his sworn and solemn duty, a duty which does more than protect his client, a duty which protects you and me and every other citizen against false conviction.

I have investigated actual cases where it has been proven that innocent men were sent to prison on aframe-up. I have worked on other cases where it has been established that some innocent person was picked as a "fall guy" by someone who turned state's evidence to save his own neck.

These things happen. What is to prevent such a thing happening to you?

The attorney at law who is willing to fight for you regardless of how black the facts may seem—the attorney who will present your case in its most favorable light to a jury of your peers is the real measure of your protection against wrongful conviction.

We should never lose sight of the fact that the question isn't whether or not a defendant is, in fact, guilty. The question is whether the legal evidence produced by the prosecution proves him guilty beyond all reasonable doubt.

That rule probably lets many guilty persons go free. Even with the benefit of that rule, however, innocent persons are at times found guilty.

That rule was formulated by the persons who framed our Constitution. It is a rule, formulated for the benefit of the citizen. If it weren't for that rule, many more guilty persons would be convicted, BUT many, many more innocent persons would also be convicted.

You and I would be at the mercy of almost any unscrupulous enemy who wanted to charge us with a crime.

Surveys show that there is a widespread misunderstanding on the part of the public of the work which is being done by the attorneys in this country.

I have long since ceased to practice law. I am now taking an interest in the problem as a citizen, not as a lawyer. And I say to you as one citizen to another that it is high time we began to understand what the bar is doing and begin to respect the lawyer who is performing his duty.

There is more at stake than you may think.

Your rights and my rights depend upon it. Your liberties and my liberties depend upon having a bar that is fearless, able, and vigorous; upon having attorneys so devoted to their duties that they will cheerfully risk their own popularity to see that any citizen who may come to them has a fair trial.

It is high time that the thinking citizens of this community awoke and realized the work that is being carried on by the lawyers in this country.

It is difficult for the lawyers to sing their own praises; yet it is high time they started telling the people of the work they are doing and its significance.

That is why I, as a citizen, a man who hasn't made a dime out of the practice of law for more than ten years and who never expects to make another dime out of the practice of law, am taking time to write this message to you. It is the message of a citizen talking to his fellow citizens.

I do hope that the bar will cooperate to the extent of seeing that this message is distributed so that you may read it.

We as citizens know far too little about the work that is being done by the organized bar and by the individual attorney today. It is time we took more of an interest in these things and, above all, it is time we had a far better understanding of what the lawyer is for, what he is doing, and how his activities are safeguarding the rights and liberties of all the citizens, whether they ever go near an attorney or not.

Secured from the State Bar of Texas and issued as a public service by 

Lawyer Referral  |  Pamphlets  |  Consumer Guide  |  Information  |  Members Public  |  Members Only  |  Contact Us  |  Home